FROM THE VP (SEP ’18)

September 2018 is shaping up to be one of the biggest for ultra racing in Australia. Australia’s first 200mi event, the Nerang 200mi got underway on Thursday (with 100mi, 100km and 50km across the weekend), and we see the return of six day racing to Australia this Sunday with the start of the Adelaide 6d event (incorporating 24h & 48h). We’ve already had three 100mi trail events this month (Great North Walk, Glasshouse and WTF), a 24h event (BUTTER24) along with one of Australia’s largest running festivals at the Surf Coast Century.

For those looking for an event to participate in the next 12 months, we’ve never had more choice in Australia or New Zealand. We’ll have the 2019 AURA calendar online in the next month or so, but if you’d like to look further abreast, I also maintain a calendar of AUS/NZL events via the DUV site here. I aim to keep this as comprehensive as possible – please email me if you are aware of any upcoming Ultra events that are not shown (noting DUV’s requirement to only include events of 45km+).

We hope to announce the 2019 AURA National Championship events shortly. The committee has agreed to a short list, but is in further discussion with the event organisers and our national selection committee to ensure the best available selection.

Australian team performance at 100km worlds

A hearty congratulations to our Australian representative team who competed at the World 100km Championships on September 8th. Brendan Davies has written a report on the event which you can find here, and the IAU post-race report is here.

IAU Announcements

In conjunction with the World 100km Championships, the IAU Committee met and made a number of announcements. First and foremost, there was a vote to fill the following committee vacancies: Nadeem Khan (Canada) was selected as President of the IAU, Robert Boyce (Australia) was selected as Vice President, and Jacek Bedkowski (Poland) was selected as Executive Council Member.

The following dates and venues were announced for upcoming world championship events:

• 2019 TRAIL World Championships – June 8th 2019, Mirandha do Corvo, Portugal
• 2019 50K World Championships – 1th September 2019, Brasov, Romania
• 2020 100K World Championships – 12th September 2020, Winschoten, The Netherlands

The IAU have also stated that there is ongoing work to find an alternative venue for the 2018 24H World Championship, with an announcement expected in October.

In late August there was an announcement about a tie-up between IAAF, ITRA and the WMRA resulting in a new combined Trail and Mountain World Championship from 2021. The IAU is also involved in these discussions. The IAAF announcement can be read here.

Records and Rankings Update

Jodie Oborne, our records officer, has update the All Time 6 Day Records (here) along with the Men’s Age Group Rankings (here). She summarised the records set so far this year in this post below on Facebook on September 5th. Since that time, at the BUTTER24 event in Brisbane on the weekend of September 15, several more age group records appear to have been set (yet to be ratified):

A number of long standing Australian age records have been broken and a few gaps in the Records filled with some outstanding performances this year. Peter Lahiff’s long standing M65 and M70 records were broken this year. Rod Rainey took Peter’s M70 record for 6 hours with 55.723km on the track in Sydney and John Nuttall grabbed the M65 record for 100km (11:20:35) and 12 hours (105.096km) in Adelaide. Coincidentally Peter originally set the M65 record in Adelaide in 2004.

When Mick Thwaites completed his 6 days of running in Hungary in May he took AURA founder Geoff Hooks M40 500km age record which was set on the track in Colac in 1986. Mick set records for 500km (3dD:2:08:47), 500 miles (5D:15:58:14) and 6 days (837.605km). Great stuff Mick.

Joel Claxton is a young rising start in ultra running achieving age records in the M20 category for 100 miles (20:04:22) and 24 hours (181.229km) at Coburg 24 hour. We hope Joel will continue to build on these great performances.

Tia Jones continued her outstanding run bettering her own 12 hour record in Canberra in the W50 category proving age really is no barrier with 131.066km.

Congratulations. These are just a few of the Records set this year.